Grade Inflation, Media Bias and Economic Growth

I've gotten a tiny little bit of blogosphere fame by converting U.S. real GDP growth rates to a letter grade scale (it all started here, with a better visualization by Brian Gongol here, along with an update for last quarter here).

One of the complaints I've received quite a bit is that my grades are inflated (I suspect this is usually because people can't reconcile their image of the recent performance of the economy with the fact that Dubya is in charge). Whatever ...

Anyway, I based that system on my personal grading scale. But, now I have access to the grading scale for an entire university - including all the majors where grade inflation is common (follow the link below for details). The GPA across (almost) all students in (almost) all classes is 3.25. That means that typical college students are graded substantially more generously than the grade scale I used for economic growth.

Using that scale, here is a grade scale for U.S. real GDP growth rates.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

Grade	Real GDP Growth Rate
A	3.3% or higher
B	1.6%-3.2%
C	0.1%-1.5%
D	-0.4%-0%
F	-0.5% or lower

Using this scale - which, mind you, is how your kids are being judged in college - Bush grades out with 10 A's in a row, and a 3.1 GPA for his entire administration (including the recession). For what it's worth, Clinton never did better than 6 A's in a row using this scale.

Now, I don't partake too seriously of this grading scale, but it does illustrate how the economy is doing on a scale that is familiar to most people.

And, it should make you think about the scale of media bias about Bush when a couple of semesters worth of 4.0's don't get you any credit.

I work at Southern Utah University - a competitive admission, comprehensive, regional, residential school offering master's but not doctoral degrees.

We do not have a great academic reputation, but neither do we have a reputation as a place to go get an easy grade.

In other words a pretty typical U.S. college. My data is from Fall 2004. The only part of the school that is excluded is the School of Continuing and Professional Education, which is small and not particularly representative of what one normally thinks of as the student body.

Our College of Education is worst for grade inflation, with a 3.56 GPA across their classes. The School of Business is best, but still has a 2.99 GPA. The overall GPA is a 3.25 - with 56% A's, 25% B's, 11% C's, 3% D's, and 5% F's.

Comments

[spencer]

Two wrongs do not usually make a right.

Just because school grades are inflated does not mean that economic studies should be inflated.

The average growth rate of the US economy since WW II has been 3.5%. So if you are giving an A for 3.3% growth I would still call that a biased conclusion.

[David Tufte]

Agreed ... BUT

I'm not making any great claims about this particular grading scale. But, it does have the virture that it is tied to a focal point - college GPAs - with which many people are familiar.

And ... there are a lot of choices to use, such as:
1) This very liberal scale,
2) My scale, which is lower than is typical, and for which I get complaints on my evaluations, or
3) Your even harder scale, which might be closer to something traditional.

Using the first one, we clearly get A's for recent performance, with the second one, we get B's for recent performance, and my guess is that you'd be happier with a C.

[dearieme]

I think highly of you chaps' Constitution, but can't recall the bit where it says that the Pres is responsible for economic growth rates.

[David Tufte]

My first lecture of the semester in Macro (available at http://www.suu.edu/faculty/tufte/05FE2020/Why_Is_Macroeconomics_So_Hard1.htm)
touches on this point.

It's only the last 50 years or so that President's have been judged that way.